Girls Season Three Premiere Recap: Road Tri-i-iip!

What follows is a recap of HBO’s Girls, written this morning on no sleep following the Golden Globe Awards. Proceed at your own risk.

Previously on Girls: Hannah punctured her ear drum with a Q-Tip. That’s it. Yes, other stuff happened: Jessa married the guy from Bridesmaids, Adam took criminal advantage of the girl from Roswell, Marnie slept with a gay guy and then got back with her ex Charlie, and Jessa divorced the guy from Bridesmaids. But that Q-Tip scene will forever stay with me as the thing that I will remember from Season 2.

But now we’re back, and a lot has changed since then. Namely, Christopher Abbott, the actor who portrayed Marnie’s boyf-4-lyfe Charlie, quit the show. He claims it was due to “creative differences.” I claim it was Marnie singing to him at that company party. Y’all would have also left.

HBO kicks season 3 off with two new episodes: “Females Only” and “Truth Or Dare.” In “Females Only,” we find are ladies in present day. Hannah and Adam are back together, popping anti-psychotics, but truly in a sweet way; Jessa is upstate at a rehab facility because white people problems; Shoshanna is sleeping with some dude in a top bunk (there is nothing lower than a top bunk); and Marnie is in a couch dwelling depression. A great start.

Hannah and Adam meet up in the Brooklyn version of Central Perk on Friends (Beanpoint? ) and run into Adam’s ex-girlfriend Natalia and her friend, who confronts him (“you big tall dumb slice of dog shit” is a pretty perf Adam description) for not only dicking over her friend, but also impregnating her. MIC DROP. Well PICK THE MIC BACK UP because the friend was totally lying. Which is kind of a heartbreaker, I was really pulling for a Ross and Rachel storyline for those two. (Hannah is such a Chandler.)

Rita Wilson is back as Marnie’s Mom, and these two can have each other. Constant bickering, without an ounce of charm. You know how they say as you age you begin to lose your ability to hear high-pitched noises? I dream of the day I’m old enough to turn this show on and not be able to hear these two arguing.

Jessa is in rehab, listening to confessionals from Kelvin, a guy they fucking named after an Instagram filter. (Impressed with their restraint not to name him Valencia or X-Pro II.) Jessa has fully burka’d herself in her cardigan to avoid dealing with any of these people, but once prodded, gives them a really deep-y life lesson: “I figured my shit out already when I was five years old, okay? Heroin is really fun, but it can also kill you.” Tell me about it, the things I knew about heroin when I was five could fill a book. Maybe even two.

Hedwig is back as Hannah’s boss: “You write about jerking a kidney stone out of some Puerto Rican Jew’s dick, and you’re embarrassed?” I’m ending this paragraph before it even began.

Here’s someone on my list of five people I’d like to meet in Gelson’s: Bob Balaban, who’s been perfectly cast as Hannah’s therapist. He chants, you guys. Privately. They leave it at that, and for the first time in the history of the show, I actually want to know more about a character. Don’t leave us hanging, Leensies!

Back in group therapy, Jessa gets obnoxiously real with a fellow patient named Laura (YES, THAT IS TAYSTEE FROM ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK) telling her, verbatim: “I’m really sorry your uncle fucked you . . . but I just feel like you’re being a bit whiny.” But when pushed to tell the group for once how she really feels, Jessa uses the presence of a puffer vest as proof that Laura is gay. In return for her opinion, Jessa gets a cup of scalding hot coffee hurled into her face. (Classic lesbian self-defense strategy.)

Hannah and Adam have a same shit/different day fight. This time about a dinner party she wants to throw for her friends. You see, readers, he hates her friends. GET IN LINE ADAM.

Jessa smokes with Jasper, or as Chris Rock would say, “The Old Guy At The Club,” who convinces her to apologize. She decides to go to Laura’s for a heart to heart, telling her she also creepy uncle, but not just any creepy uncle, but a gay one with AIDS. Of course she did. And she also knew what AIDS meant when she was 5. She was like a baby hooker genius, this one. Laura tells Jessa that she is a lesbian, albeit one who hates sports, and clutches her puffer vest in solidarity. When Jessa asks if she’s ever kissed a girl, we’re left with a solid PG-13 girl-on-girl cliffhanger.

Let’s get back to the Worst Dinner Party in the World, where Adam looks like he wants to drop D. A tearful Marnie has Charlie on the brain, and dreams of a world in which he has tumors which somehow prevented him from fully loving her. Sad for her, Adam ran into him, and [horns of defeat] he’s tumor-free. Marnie, at a loss for words and appetite, slowly spits out pieces of her taco.

And talk about transitions. We go from one taco to another (I AM SORRY BUT THEY DID) and find Jessa performing “charity oral” on Laura. (She learned how to do it from a book she read when she was five.) But before she can get all the way to Chapter 7, the door flies open to reveal every single person in that rehab peekin in like the fucking Brady Bunch opening credits. And that’s it. Jessa is out of rehab and needs a ride back to New York. Which can only mean one thing . . .

ROAD TRIPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!

EPISODE 2: TRUTH OR DARE

Adam rents a car because Hannah is a newborn child under the age of 25, and they head up North to Woodstock, New York to rescue her. But why go on what could be a pleasant, romantic road trip, just the two of you, when you can take along your friend who talks like Jessie Spano on the Diet Pills episode of Saved By The Bell? Well why not, no one says!

Jessa was put in solitary confinement, lest she perform oral on anything else in the facility (janitor, stray cat, garden fountain), and what does she do? Escape to go hang out with Jasper, the only other person there who could possibly want oral. Papa issues, can you hear me?

The road trip trio stops at a diner for brunch, where Hannah calls Marnie and politely delivers a neatly wrapped FOMO package to her doorstep via phone. Marnie feels left out of the trip. So does Rita Wilson a little bit. But it’s okay, because the only reason Hannah’s even on this trip is to find metaphors for her book. (We know this because she says it out loud.)

The Road Trip Threesome (who are starting to sound more and more like the Guilford Four) play Motel Truth or Dare, which soon turns into Shoshe hiding out by the vending machine while those two eff so that Adam can finally, for God’s sake, go to sleep. When Hannah finds Shoshe stacking Chex Mix (Side note: If you’re allergic to it, why did you get it?), we are treated to maybe my favorite dialogue exchange from either episode:

Hannah: Uh I hate to break it to you, but school is the best thing you’ll ever have. Your job is basically just to like be yourself. That’s why I apply to grad school every single year.

Shoshanna: Honestly, the only people that I ever hear say that are people that don’t make any money.

truthcampaign

Adam pulls over on the side of the road to go on an impromptu hike. Hannah protests by sitting down, and for the first time in the show’s entire run, I really relate to the girl. She lays in some dried leaves listening to This American Life.

Jasper manages to catch Jessa before gets picked up, and he’s changed his tune, from “Creep? Not Me!” to his bigger hit titled “Let’s Take Pills and Fuck.” She leaves unscathed, and luckily, the Mystery Gang is in the lobby, ready to take her back to the city.

These episodes left me with more questions than answers. Like: Have I always hated these people so much? Is it normal to root for a main character to die of a drug overdose? Is Adam too good for these people? That last one is actually a statement, because he is. (I’ve always been firmly Pro-Adam. Yes, through it all.) Papa, he hears me.

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